On a more serious note: any idea who the Wang Kuang in RoTK2 is? He's hidden in 189, 194, and 201, he serves Cao Cao/Cao Pi in 208, 215, and 220, and was born in 160. I assumed he was the Wang Kuang who joined the ADZC, but since that Wang Kuang died in 160, that can't be the case (unless Koei dropped the ball -- which they certainly did with some stats!)

Seems to be a simple mistake by Koei. Probably mixed him up with Wang Zhong, who serves Cao Cao and Cao Pi during those years in later games while in RoTK2, he's just a free officer throughout the game.There is no other famous Wang Kuang I know of. But it's certainly not a name translation error, since the Chinese characters are correct.

IIRC multiple SGZ entries say that it was a standard part of interrogating people as part of trying to find out if they were guilty or not. It's an absurd idea, of course, but some reason they didn't bother to listen to people who would not be born for another eighteen hundred years or so. >_>

Unless I specifically say otherwise, assume I am talking about historical Three Kingdoms, and not the novel.

There are a lot of them. As DragonAtma said, it was pretty much standard procedure in interrogations. Listing every example would be quite the chore.

Off the top of my head, Cao Cao suspected that Yang Biao was plotting with Yuan Shu (because Yang Biao was married to Yuan Shu's sister). He sent Man Chong to interrogate Yang Biao. Xun Yu and Kong Rong begged Man Chong to just ask Yang Biao questions, but Man Chong ignored them and had Yang Biao beaten instead. However, after this he was convinced of Yang Biao's innocence and spoke to Cao Cao in his defense.

Thanks, I'll have a read. Mostly interested because of a line in 1984 where they mention that rat torture (look it up if you're curious, kinda gory) happened in imperial China but I don't remember reading anything specific on it.

As luck would have it, I remembered one case of interrogation-by-torture.

Before Zhang Jiao's rebellion, Liu Tao and his boss, Yang Ci (grandfather of Yang Xiu and father of Yang Biao) wrote memorials warning about him, but they were ignored. During the rebellion, the memorials were found, and both were made marquises. So when Liu Tao wrote a memorial about the eunuchs in 185, the eunuchs falsely accused him of being with the Liang rebellion, and arranged for "steadily increasing" tortures in jail. IIRC Records don't list a cause of death for Liu Tao, but he likely died because of torture, directly or indirectly.

Unless I specifically say otherwise, assume I am talking about historical Three Kingdoms, and not the novel.